With more than 20 years of professional experience in both news and marketing/PR, I am an expert in communications and digital media. But I haven’t spent the last two decades perfecting just my writing and editing. I’ve also learned how to navigate challenging personalities and work in high pressure environments and under tight deadlines. And, in turn, I’ve become a practiced team leader, a creative and quick problem solver, capable of effectively prioritizing tasks and juggling many projects at once.
As the current Marketing and Communications Coordinator for the organ procurement organization (OPO) serving western Pennsylvania and West Virginia, I develop and execute the organization’s communications strategies and marketing plans.
Specifically, I coordinate the input and research of three full-service agencies, which serve this organization, as well as two sister non-profit groups, overseen by our organization. I create and curate our organization’s marketing and creative materials and handle all public relations. I act as the organization’s brand and content moderator, ensuring that all communications vehicles show a unified identity and tone to meet production quality standards. Additionally, I act as an organizational spokesperson and write remarks, blogs and letters for the leadership team and all key publications -- a monthly newsletter, a quarterly board report and the annual report -- documenting our activities and meeting our mission.
I’ve been recognized repeatedly for my dedication to the organization and our cause. In 2021, I received the Presidential Award – an honor bestowed to only three other employees in the last decade, and which is given to a team member who’s shown an unflinching dedication to the organization, its mission and to our never-ending performance excellence journey.
In 2017, I was chosen by our leadership team to undergo Studer Education, a specialized leadership training program for healthcare partners to improve culture and transform outcomes. In 2018, I was asked to join the organization’s Malcolm Baldrige Criteria Category 5 (Workforce) Team, tasked with creating and maintaining a high‐performance environment that enables an organization to adapt to change and ultimately succeed. In 2019, the organization earned the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, a presidential-level honor that recognizes the highest level of national recognition for performance excellence that a U.S. organization can receive. We are one of only five Pennsylvania organizations ever to achieve the Baldrige Award.
I serve currently as the Chair of the Public Education and Public Relations Council, an elected position, for the Association of Organ Procurement Organizations (AOPO), the national association representing the 57 OPOs nationwide in our joint mission to advance organ donation and transplantation through innovation, advocacy and education. In 2019, I was appointed to a 3-year term on the Donate Life America Advisory Council, because of my proven-track record as a leader within the donation and transplantation community.
Prior to my current role, I worked as a professional journalist for more than 15 years, much of that time spent covering Capitol Hill in my hometown of Washington, D.C. and acting primarily as a television news producer, but also as a web editor and professional photographer/videographer.
At WPXI, the NBC affiliate in Pittsburgh, I produced among other programs, NightTalk, the market’s only live, primetime news and talk show. The job required me to maintain close relationships with local and national newsmakers, write all on-air copy, compile all visual aspects of the show and maintain the show’s web and social media platforms. From the time I took over as the show’s producer, ratings consistently rivaled national cable news outlets in the same time slot.
Before moving to Pittsburgh in 2011, I was the editor of Minnesota-based Minnetonka Patch, one of the nearly 800 hyperlocal news sites from AOL. In my year as its editor, Minnetonka Patch consistently ranked among the top performing MN Patch sites in terms of penetration and profitability. With Patch, I created, edited, curated and published the website’s content and daily newsletter, managed its social media presence and oversaw a team of paid freelance contributors and volunteer community bloggers. I also tracked website traffic data with Google Analytics. Understanding search engine optimization (SEO), including effective content tagging and headline writing, I then used this data to tailor the website’s content to increase the number of unique visitors, raise viewer engagement and boost click-through rates. During this time, I also became an expert in using a content management system (CMS) to publish news on the Internet. Patch’s sister publications, Huffington Post and AOL News, also picked up and re-published many of my stories, including several reports that broke news in Minnesota and the Nation.
Prior to joining the new frontier of on-line news, I worked as a television news producer at WRNN, PBS and ABC News. As the sole Washington-based producer for WRNN, one of the largest independent television broadcast stations in the country, reaching over 5 million households in the NY/NJ/CT tri-state area, I helped produce a nightly news show that focused on local and state politics and boasted guests like then-Senator Hillary Clinton. At PBS I was responsible for a daily story that aired on Nightly Business Report, a long-running and highly respected broadcast that airs nationally on public television. And, while working at ABC News, I won a Peabody Award for work done on September 11th, 2001.
I have also worked as a freelance writer and photographer for Mt. Lebanon Magazine. I am a current member of the Public Relations Society of America and a previous member of the Writers Guild of America (east).
I am a graduate of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, where I earned a Journalism Bachelor of Arts (JBA) degree from the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, one of the earliest and most-respected communications programs in the country. I simultaneously also earned two Bachelor of Arts (BA) degrees – in Marketing and French – from the university’s College of Letters & Science. Even with three majors, I managed to graduate at the top of my class, and in four years!
In my free time I love to travel the globe with my family, a tradition started long ago, when my parents – a National Geographic photographer and an anthropologist – toted me around the world, posting lengthy assignments in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Middle East.
Today, I live outside of Pittsburgh with my husband, Scott, our teenagers, Grace and Eli, and our beloved and elderly Chihuahua mix, Badger.
Copyright © 2021 Katelynn Metz - All Rights Reserved.
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